Featured Bitcoins.....

Care to explain how a "bitcoin" can go in an offering plate?

You do realize what they "are," right?

 

What is a bitcoin, I'm lazy and don't want to Google it. :laugh:

 

Digital currency - they don't physically exist.

And know - I don't believe they are the start of the mark of the beast.

 

Bitcoins are in a bit (all puns intended) of trouble anyway; look up Mt Gox.

 

How do you steal something that doesn't exist?

 

My understanding is, it was proposed as an alternative form of currency, easier to carry and use than physical currency or credit/debit cards, and people paid into this start-up because it sounded pretty good. If you ever saw "Almost Human," they would wave flash drives at each other or stick them into ATM-like machines and talk about "stealing 1,000,000 bitcoins."

The problem is, we can already do this from our phones. The credit card companies just haven't figured out how to charge the businesses for the transactions like they do for credit/debit purchases.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/25/business/apparent-theft-at-mt-gox-shakes-bitcoin-world.html?_r=0

 

Bitcoins, and the alternatives, are just to crazy unstable and will more than likely remain so because they are to easily to influence. Someone can make a post on Reddit and the entire Bitcoin market can lose 50% of it's value in seconds. With the recent theft, and the massive bust of the darknet drug exchange, they are decades from being remotely popular outside of the techogeek and criminal circles.

 

So it was a scam, plain and simple. That's the only way I can describe a scheme in which people pay money in and get absolutely nothing in return. That's precisely what happened here. Even if they got paper "confirming" their "deposit" -- there was never anything there.

So again, I ask, how can you steal something that doesn't exist? They didn't steal "bitcoins" -- they don't exist. They stole money from gullible idiots.

 

We've not had anyone attempted to give in Bitcoin, but it could happen.

We would just cash them ASAP and be done with it.

Not sure how a digital currency could be the "mark of the beast" (I don't think that's real anyways) but some will surely argue for it.

 

The mark of the beast is a physical mark or implant. That is the only interpretation of the Greek charagma, which means "a stamp or imprinted mark." There has recently been developed a water-soluable computer chip " ... that can stick to the skin like a child's tattoo and in some cases dissolve in water when they're no longer needed."

How's that for spooky?

 

Let me ask a phlisophical question: Does your bank account physcially exist?

What is the real difference between a debit card and a bitcoin other than the specific currency that they represent? Nothing physical exchanges between parties in any event other than bits and bytes which in both case represent nothing more than a promise.

 

Yes. I can walk into any branch of my bank and withdraw every penny deposited there. Mt. Gox was an exchange for digital (non-existent) "currency" that was played, traded and hoarded like stock. It sounded great at the beginning, but it was a scam. There was nothing there. They may as well have been Poke Mon cards. There is only value to those who value them.

CEO Mark Karpeles was like the "man behind the curtain" in Wizard of Oz who told the intrepid travelers to "pay no attention to." He claims the exchange was hacked. Impossible. There was nothing to steal. The money was not stored online, only the "record" of it, which is a joke. Records are worthless, and if the money spent to acquire "bitcoins" was properly handled, no one would have lost a cent.

Karpeles lied. But the idiots who sent him money are too stupid not to be scammed. Who in their right minds sends cash, whether via transfer or mail, to an unregulated, non-currency exchange? Sheer stupidity.

 

Folks, you both missed the point. Bitcoins are just a medium of exchange, the currency of the internet. There are even attempts to tax them as personal property. There really isn't much difference between them and your debit card.

Great. The primary "bank" for bitcoins has crashed. That never has happened in the history of banking either. Regulations just haven't caught up with the reality.......yet.

Your money isn't at the bank either. All that is there is a promise to pay if you make a demand. There really isn't any difference.

We aren't on the gold standard. Your dollar bills don't say "Silver Certificates" any more. What backs up your dollars other than the collective belief that they are worth something.